Page 45 of Twisted Road

“You aren’t acting like you,” Master agreed. “You’ve been at that house for two weeks. I’ve never known you to go more than a few hours without sex, let alone two weeks of abstinence. Steele confirmed she couldn’t have sex.”

“Something isn’t right about the entire setup,” Maestro said. “She’s holding you hostage someway. Got her hooks into you, and you’re feeling sorry for her.”

“You ever known me to feel sorry for a bitch?” Keys demanded. “Have I ever put one on the back of my bike? Or called in my brothers to make a promise to protect her if I’m gone?”

“You had a concussion, Keys,” Player said. “Maybe it wasn’t as bad as Lyric’s, but you returned acting completely out of character. It’s our job to protect you.”

“That’s fuckin’ bullshit. It was your job to make certain the best thing that ever happened to me doesn’t walk.” He shoved a hand through his hair, glaring at them. “Didn’t you learn anything from the shit you stirred up with Seychelle? Savage nearly lost her with your crap advice.” He gestured to Lyric. “I wasn’t living. I wasn’t going to last. No reason. None. I just didn’t give a damn about anything until the first time I laid eyes on her.”

He wasn’t the kind of man to pour out his guts to his brothers. It went against everything he was, but he wanted family for Lyric. He wanted to give her more than just him because he didn’t feel like he was enough. Maybe it was too fast or he was too desperate, but he’d gone about it all wrong. He should have waited, should have made his brothers understand what Lyric was to him.

“She doesn’t care about money. You read that all wrong. She’s so independent, getting her to take clothes when she needed them was a fight. She’s a loner. Loves to go on solo backpacking trips. Lives simply. Has no family, but she’s comfortable with who she is. First fuckin’ time I saw her, I came alive. Didn’t have a clue what to do with her because I had it stuck in my head I wasn’t allowing any pussy to lead me around by my cock. I was living free even if it meant I wasn’t living.”

Player threw his hands into the air. “Are you listening to yourself? How do you think it’s going to work when you go back to being you? Because you can’t change, Keys, no matter how much you want to. You like to fuck tits and ass, and you do it on a far more regular basis than anyone I know. I’m being real with you. That woman”—he jerked his thumb toward Lyric—“falls in love with you, you’ll destroy her. Better we run her off than you crush her down the line. Women in love tend to want to be exclusive.”

Keys shook his head. This was his fault, no matter how he wanted to look at it. He had the reputation. He’d earned it. These three men knew him, and yet they didn’t. He had struggled with coming to terms with what it would mean to make his claim on Lyric. He also knew that without her, he was empty. Fucking tits and ass was an empty way to live and should have told his friends just how little he cared about himself.

“You don’t get it, and I don’t blame you. What I do blame you for is that I asked you to look after her. To welcome her into our family. I asked that your women welcome her. I don’t see the women, and you sure as hell didn’t welcome her. I’ve never asked for a single favor. Not once. You wanted a woman, I went all out to help you. That request alone should have bought her a little bit of a friendly welcome.”

Keys looked around the shop. He knew Lyric had loved it. She would make this business thrive, and her salon would be beautiful. “I’ll want the details of the fire and a reasonable explanation why we didn’t get a heads-up. In the meantime, the three of you can go fuck yourselves. I’ve got a long road ahead of me, convincing my only that she’s the one and that regardless of whether or not my family is on board, we’re together and we’ll make it work.”

He pushed past Maestro and stalked down the street toward the headlands. Lyric sat in the grass, her jacket pulled tightly around her, the hood up, covering her bright waterfall of thick red silk. For Keys, that straight-as-a-board, fiery red said all there was to say about Lyric. He didn’t understand how anyone couldn’t see her passion for life. That hair gave it away.

He sank onto the ground beside her, thighs close but not touching. He needed to break through the wall she’d put up. She was good at walls. She could build them high and thick so no enemy could penetrate. No matter how many fights they had, he didn’t want her to ever view him as the enemy.

“I didn’t know about the fire, Lyric,” he confessed quietly.

“I heard you, it just didn’t penetrate at the time.” She kept her head down, looking at her hands, the two fists she’d made. She wasn’t shaking. Steady as a rock.

“They blindsided both of us.” He wanted that to sink in.

“Arrogant pricks,” she hissed under her breath. She didn’t look at him, but she didn’t seem to include him in her assessment.

“Yeah, babe, they are, but I thought we agreed only one of us is going to have the temper, the gun and the foul mouth. I get that you’re pissed. I am too. But you can’t be spewing language. You’re smart; you’ve got a vocabulary. Think of other insults. Get creative. Hell, we can write them all down in big letters and laminate that shit and hang it on the wall. In fact, I know the perfect place to hang it when we put together the salon.”

Her dimple flickered as her lips curved. It was brief, but she couldn’t help that terrible sense of humor that enabled her to be with him. Now that she was listening, he had to make it clear to her that they had already established the rules they had agreed on to live together. He needed the reassurance that she was committed.

“You don’t get to run from me when you’re pissed off, whether it’s justified or not, Wildfire. We promised each other communication first. You have a right to space, but not running off.”

“I thought I communicated very well.” This time he got the side-eye. “In fact, I was quite eloquent.”

“Well, okay, gotta admit that’s true. Other than putting me in the same arrogant-prick category as those three jokers, I thought you shredded it. I’m going to want to talk about Declan and his Russian friend. I’ll want to know why you didn’t mention before that he’d actually caught up to you. You led me to believe you were always one step ahead.”

She stared out to sea. In the distance a dark bank of fog rolled and spun, an indicator of how quickly the weather changed there on the coast.

“I might have done that. But I don’t like talking about Declan. Or his hideous Russian friend.” She continued to look everywhere but at him.

Keys threaded his fingers through hers and brought her palm to his thigh. “Are you just thinking up a lot of unnecessary shit to argue with me about?”

For one moment, she turned her head toward him, and he got that dimple and the curve of her lips, but it was momentary. She turned back to watching the sea. “Yes.”

Inside, very deep, there was that bright spear of light that burst through the layers of dark and spread like a wildfire through him. His Wildfire. She was aptly named. He heaved a long-suffering sigh. “I assume you have some reason you’re going to convince yourself is logical.”

“Well, of course.” She took a moment and then admitted the truth. “l won’t try to convince myself it’s logical, only necessary.”

“Share. I can’t wait to hear.”

“There’s no need for sarcasm. You already seem to be winning every single argument we have. That doesn’t bode well for my future.”